Do you live on autopilot?

Melinda Sanchez
Dec 9, 2024
2 min read

"Life is flying by," one of my coaching clients told me last week during a session."Why do you think your life is flying by?" I asked her.There was silence for a few seconds until she found the answer: "Routine consumes me."

Have you ever experienced getting in your car to go somewhere but ended up taking the usual route you drive to work every day? That’s an example of living on autopilot. The same thing happens with our daily lives. We tend to follow a routine: we wake up, have breakfast, take the same route to work... and so on, until we go to bed without realizing we've spent the whole day on autopilot, letting our mind take over for us.

The good news is that we’re not doing anything wrong. Our brain is designed for survival, and autopilot is simply a way for it to conserve energy so we can focus on other things. The problem arises when most of our day is spent in this state of "just going with the flow."

Living on autopilot keeps us from two very important things:

Enjoying the day-to-day:When we live in autopilot mode, our days tend to look very similar. We miss out on savoring small details we either normalize or overlook due to lack of attention.
Making conscious decisions:We lose the ability to decide what we want to do or how we want to feel; instead, we simply follow the plan or routine.

If you want to switch off autopilot and enjoy your life more, here are a few simple tips to practice:

1. Change up your daily routine

This doesn’t mean creating a new routine that becomes just another autopilot mode. It means deciding how your day will go and what you’ll do.For example: today, have breakfast at the office; on the car ride with the kids, instead of listening to the radio, talk about the movie you watched last night; tonight, don’t cook—order takeout instead.

2. Spend a few minutes at the end of the day reflecting

Ask yourself: How did the day go? What did I do? What did I enjoy? What am I grateful for? What would I have liked to go differently?

3. Practice meditation

When we meditate, we bring our mind to the present moment. Regular meditation trains our minds to live more in the now. It’s like exercising: your body becomes more flexible, your muscle tone improves... With meditation, we train our mind so it becomes easier to stay focused on the present.